US announces massive package of arms sales to Taiwan valued at more than $10 billion

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has an­nounced a mas­sive pack­age of arms sales to Tai­wan val­ued at more than $10 bil­lion that in­cludes medi­um-range mis­siles, how­itzers and drones, draw­ing an an­gry re­sponse from Chi­na.

The State De­part­ment an­nounced the sales late Wednes­day dur­ing a na­tion­al­ly tele­vised ad­dress by Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, who made scant men­tion of for­eign pol­i­cy is­sues and did not speak about Chi­na or Tai­wan at all. U.S.-Chi­nese ten­sions have ebbed and flowed dur­ing Trump’s sec­ond term, large­ly over trade and tar­iffs but al­so over Chi­na’s in­creas­ing ag­gres­sive­ness to­ward Tai­wan, which Bei­jing has said must re­uni­fy with the main­land.

If ap­proved by Con­gress, it would be the largest-ever U.S. weapons pack­age to Tai­wan, ex­ceed­ing the to­tal amount of $8.4 bil­lion in U.S. arms sales to Tai­wan dur­ing the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The eight arms sales agree­ments an­nounced Wednes­day cov­er 82 high-mo­bil­i­ty ar­tillery rock­et sys­tems, or HI­MARS, and 420 Army Tac­ti­cal Mis­sile Sys­tems, or AT­ACMS — sim­i­lar to what the U.S. had been pro­vid­ing Ukraine dur­ing the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion to de­fend it­self from Rus­sia — worth more than $4 bil­lion. They al­so in­clude 60 self-pro­pelled how­itzer sys­tems and re­lat­ed equip­ment worth more than $4 bil­lion and drones val­ued at more than $1 bil­lion.

Oth­er sales in the pack­age in­clude mil­i­tary soft­ware val­ued at more than $1 bil­lion, Javelin and TOW mis­siles worth more than $700 mil­lion, he­li­copter spare parts worth $96 mil­lion and re­fur­bish­ment kits for Har­poon mis­siles worth $91 mil­lion.

The eight sales agree­ments amount to $11.15 bil­lion, ac­cord­ing to Tai­wan’s De­fense Min­istry.

The State De­part­ment said the sales serve “U.S. na­tion­al, eco­nom­ic, and se­cu­ri­ty in­ter­ests by sup­port­ing the re­cip­i­ent’s con­tin­u­ing ef­forts to mod­ern­ize its armed forces and to main­tain a cred­i­ble de­fen­sive ca­pa­bil­i­ty.”

“The pro­posed sale(s) will help im­prove the se­cu­ri­ty of the re­cip­i­ent and as­sist in main­tain­ing po­lit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty, mil­i­tary bal­ance, and eco­nom­ic progress in the re­gion,” the state­ments said.

Chi­na’s For­eign Min­istry at­tacked the move, say­ing it would vi­o­late diplo­mat­ic agree­ments be­tween Chi­na and the U.S.; grave­ly harm Chi­na’s sov­er­eign­ty, se­cu­ri­ty and ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty; and un­der­mine re­gion­al sta­bil­i­ty.

“The ‘Tai­wan in­de­pen­dence’ forces on the is­land seek in­de­pen­dence through force and re­sist re­uni­fi­ca­tion through force, squan­der­ing the hard-earned mon­ey of the peo­ple to pur­chase weapons at the cost of turn­ing Tai­wan in­to a pow­der keg,” said For­eign Min­istry spokesper­son Guo Ji­akun.

“This can­not save the doomed fate of ‘Tai­wan in­de­pen­dence’ but will on­ly ac­cel­er­ate the push of the Tai­wan Strait to­ward a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion of mil­i­tary con­fronta­tion and war. The U.S. sup­port for ‘Tai­wan In­de­pen­dence’ through arms will on­ly end up back­fir­ing. Us­ing Tai­wan to con­tain Chi­na will not suc­ceed,” he added.

Un­der fed­er­al law, the U.S. is ob­lig­at­ed to as­sist Tai­wan with its self-de­fense, a point that has be­come in­creas­ing­ly con­tentious with Chi­na, which has vowed to take Tai­wan by force, if nec­es­sary.

Tai­wan’s De­fense Min­istry in a state­ment Thurs­day ex­pressed grat­i­tude to the U.S. over the arms sale, which it said would help Tai­wan main­tain “suf­fi­cient self-de­fense ca­pa­bil­i­ties” and bring strong de­ter­rent ca­pa­bil­i­ties. Tai­wan’s bol­ster­ing of its de­fense “is the foun­da­tion for main­tain­ing re­gion­al peace and sta­bil­i­ty,” the min­istry said.

Tai­wan’s For­eign Min­is­ter Lin Chia-lung sim­i­lar­ly thanked the U.S. for its “long-term sup­port for re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty and Tai­wan’s self-de­fense ca­pa­bil­i­ties,” which he said are key for de­ter­ring a con­flict in the Tai­wan Strait, the body of wa­ter sep­a­rat­ing Tai­wan from Chi­na’s main­land.

The arms sale comes as Tai­wan’s gov­ern­ment has pledged to raise de­fense spend­ing to 3.3% of the is­land’s gross do­mes­tic prod­uct next year and to reach 5% by 2030. The boost came af­ter Trump and the Pen­ta­gon re­quest­ed that Tai­wan spend as much as 10% of its GDP on its de­fense, a per­cent­age well above what the U.S. or any of its ma­jor al­lies spend on de­fense. The de­mand has faced push­back from Tai­wan’s op­po­si­tion KMT par­ty and some of its pop­u­la­tion.

Tai­wanese Pres­i­dent Lai Ching-te last month an­nounced a spe­cial $40 bil­lion bud­get for arms pur­chas­es, in­clud­ing to build an air de­fense sys­tem with high-lev­el de­tec­tion and in­ter­cep­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties called Tai­wan Dome. The bud­get will be al­lo­cat­ed over eight years, from 2026 to 2033.

The U.S. boost in mil­i­tary as­sis­tance to Tai­wan was pre­viewed in leg­is­la­tion adopt­ed by Con­gress that Trump is ex­pect­ed to sign short­ly.

Last week, the Chi­nese em­bassy in Wash­ing­ton de­nounced the leg­is­la­tion, known as the Na­tion­al De­fense Au­tho­riza­tion Act, say­ing it un­fair­ly tar­get­ed Chi­na as an ag­gres­sor. The U.S. Sen­ate passed the bill Wednes­day.

Mis­tre­anu re­port­ed from Bei­jing. AP video jour­nal­ists Olivia Zhang in Bei­jing and John­son Lai in Taipei, Tai­wan, con­tributed to this re­port.

By MATTHEW LEE and SIM­I­NA MIS­TRE­ANU7WASH­ING­TON (AP)